Mark Bell's Power Project - Peptides, Metabolism & the New Age of Biohacking (feat. Sean Wells)

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

In this episode, biochemist and formulator Sean Wells joins us for a deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of peptides, metabolism, nootropics, gut health, fat loss, sleep, and longevity.Guest: Sean WellsInstagram: @seanwellsBook: The Energy FormulaSpecial perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject

There might be crackdown on peptides, which is kind of scary because I think they have a lot of utility. Peptides can't be patented because they are just naturally occurring proteins. Iostatin inhibitors takes the brakes off. But we're getting in like some weird territory, like are we going to blow up our heart? This is the one that could actually ruin the whole peptide industry. And is there abuse potential for some of these peptides? Potentially, something like BPC, you're healing the body, like making it younger, helping with recovery, repair, things like GHK.

ACU, TB 500, these are the things that literally will prevent surgery. John Wells, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for having me on. Let's dive into some peptide stuff because we were just chit-chatting a little bit about it. And I heard some news recently that, you know, like there might be a crackdown on peptides, which is kind of scary because I think they have a lot of utility. What are some of your thoughts?

It's frightening to me because most of the peptides, there are some things that are getting called peptides. like red atrutide or semi-glutide that really have work that's been put into them on a pharmaceutical sense although that said they originally come from this incretin pathway uh that's fairly short acting for glp one uh you may have heard it came from like the the gillomaster like that has its uh it's it's venom and and it literally slows uh the way food kind of moves through your GI tract, but they ended up putting some fatty acid esters on them, and it actually makes them last for more like a week. So there is some technology on their side.

The argument, I think, is there that they've done some work. I'm not someone that wants to steal someone else's work because I put in a lot of work on my own ingredients. I have about 40 patented ingredients. That said, many of these peptides can't be patented because, they are just naturally occurring proteins, peptides, these short chain proteins that are made up of anywhere from like four to 20-some amino acids. And they occur naturally in the body and they're quite often bioregulatory signals. Like they tell your body what to do. And so to me it's

frustrating that anyone could even come in and try and outlaw these things or limit their availability because one, for the most part, they seem pretty safe because they are naturally occurring peptides. But also, these are things that are truly naturally made in the body and should be available to everyone because they're they're just not medicines like and so it's it's really frustrating right now that this is happening uh that these are potentially getting banned because it is going to dig into pharmaceutical sales without a doubt they're highly effective anyone who knows bpc 157 tb 500 mod C um you know SS 31 um certainly these are very affected. We were talking about Red at Trutide before, which is not on the market yet, but is

certainly, you know, coming as a pharmaceutical. And a lot of these companies are getting away with saying research use only RUO on the vial. And so it's kind of a mixed bag. I think some of the peptide companies are pushing a little too much. Some of them are very safe and without a doubt should be available, things like BPC 157, I think, can make a massive change in people's lives and there's no way that they should be restricted. And there's been peptides that have been available for a very long time, things like growth hormone, insulin, that are peptides as well. Are they almost like, are some peptides, would you think that they're almost akin to supplements in some way, like where they maybe shouldn't be regulated?

yeah well you know technically supplements are regulated to a degree by the FDA and FTC and I think the FDA should step in when there's real safety concerns and is there abuse potential for some of these peptides potentially but I think by and large they are safe and again going back to something like BPC where you're healing the body like making it younger helping with recovery repair things like ghk u tb 500 kpv i mean these are the things that literally will prevent surgery in many cases uh prevent surgery and then potential of preventing a heart disease potential of uh just really a whole cascade of disease right uh diabetes and so forth and maybe even cancers even uh

G.I diseases, you know, CBO, things like that can be healed. BPC 157, KPV are incredible at the gut level at reducing inflammation, improving leaky gut outcomes. So yeah, it is frustrating right now, but there's no doubt to just follow the money trail of it's going to put a dent into big pharma without a doubt. I'm seeing, you know, probably five years ago there was maybe five peptide sites you know pretty big ones like peptide sciences some of these and you know there maybe there was some kind of fly-by-night ones now I'm seeing hundreds there's hundreds almost everyone has one and I you know as a formulator as a biochemist as a dietitian someone who's been like CSO and a lot of companies and help

companies go to sale I've helped 11 companies get acquired I am getting calls probably every other day about hey I'm an influencer would you like to join our team I'm selling peptides and it's like oh my god like literally every other day it's wild everyone is jumping on board and a lot of people are making a lot of money right now and trust me big pharma is noticing so I think something's about to happen yeah people are making like millions of dollars like I have a bunch of friends that own peptide companies and they're good for them. They're doing really, really well. Hopefully that has an opportunity to continue because it seems like a lot of these people have like a YouTube following, Instagram following, and then they also

have a following where they're giving people more information. So it's almost, you can almost look at it as it's like less haphazard than Tylenol or Advil, which does come with some instruction. And obviously it's been around for so long. We probably don't need a ton of information surrounding. it, but there is information that says how many people die from Advil every year. And I'm not saying that you can't die from peptides because there's certain peptides I can think of that you could probably overdue and run into all kinds of trouble. But they seem like they're, not only they seem safe and effective, it seems like there's quite a bit of information coming out about them all the time that people are sharing. I think a couple of concerns, like with supplements, the FTC

in particular can get involved when you're making claims that are not founded claims. This happens a lot with like multi-level marketing, network marketing. It's called like if you can think of some of these companies like Dotaura or Young Living or you know, Amway and, you know, some of these huge, multi-billion dollar companies that have levels and levels and levels of people that will be on social media, that will be, you know, out on stage, potentially saying all kinds of claims that actually the companies, are ultimately responsible for those claims if they share that information like through their site if they reshare someone else saying something then they're responsible for it and I think that's

kind of the case with peptides because I'm hearing a lot of influencers talk about these peptides and make claims one they're supposed to be research use only already and we're not supposed to even be talking about them like you'll see like kind of the best in class peptide sites make zero claims. But two, they're making a lot of erroneous claims, which worries me. And then if it's not clear on how to use them, you could get potentially issues like mixing them, maybe like drawing up too much, too little. I also have concerns with the sourcing. All of these ingredients are typically coming from China, as are a lot of my raw materials for supplements. But I'm aware of the testing, the GMP level of the facilities, just because something looks pharmaceutical

and comes in a vial, you don't know how pure it is. Could be nothing in there. It could be nothing in there. It could also be, you know, 95% pure, not 99.9% pure. And it could be a third of the price because it's not 99.9% pure. And then it might not be lifelized and it might not be put in the right. uh medium in terms of like pH uh and how it's controlled in the vial um you know so some of these things can degrade the peptide potentially so uh peptides are very fragile um like even when

you're hydrating it with bacteriostatic water you don't want to uh like fill it too fast or like kind of uh you know blast the the water in there if it gets cloudy you're you're potentially breaking up the peptide you're supposed to like kind of hit the wall of the vial and slowly hydrate it and then roll the vial instead of shake the vial um you know peptides are very fragile and this is why like we were talking about before that you're not supposed to mix them in the same vial uh because many of them have different storage conditions different pH is needed and they can actually cause degradation in the same vial potentially so most of them cannot be mixed they could be mixed in the same barrel if you're pulling up and you're about to inject you know and you're taking maybe

like a minute to do that that's fine uh typically um but as far as kind of keeping them in the vial that's that wouldn't be okay what about um some of these stacks that come together you know it's like a glow stack there's pc tv and the copper are all together or bpc and tb are all together or bpc and tb are often combined as a powder. What are your thoughts there? Those do seem to be pretty stable together. And so what's ideal about that is they're really working for repair regeneration. And so ideologically they go together, but they do seem to be pretty stable together as well. So yeah, KPV is another one that's often in that stack. I'm not familiar with that one. What does that do? It's more on the gut level that it's

working um and it has some immunological and anti-inflammatory effects um it's it's really powerful uh for things like sebo as i was discussing before the um small intestine uh bowel overgrowth digestive issues tons right tons so like actually taking the four of those is a very powerful stack and you'll see some of uh some of the peptide places selling all four together in a stack so i think it'll even be I want to say that it's like 10, 10, 10, 10, like a milligram wise. So, yeah. I saw a video a couple days ago of somebody making a, and this is probably more related to supplements,

which we're going to do another podcast talking about supplements, since that's your kind of first area. My wheelhouse, yeah. Yeah. Somebody posted this thing, and they're like, here's my poop stack. They call it poop juice so they can go to the bathroom. What I was surprised and shocked about is how many people, were interested in that how many people have gut issues how many people there's a bunch of

people saying they have constipations and people saying they go way too much where some things you've seen over the years like what are some things that's huge are there general things that people can kind of look for that could be helpful as far as helping you poop help gut health and yeah yeah a ton of things there so again going back to bpc 157 and kpv those are excellent even on the when you do the oral bpc that is probably the one place that you'll have actually see benefit. You don't see as much systemic benefit with BPC 157 orally, but you will see it more at the gut level. Beyond that, I think taking like a hydrolyzed collagen, a lot of the gut lining, we know about hair skin, nails, bone, joints, etc., but

gut is largely made of collagen for its connective tissue. So the gut lining, you can help heal that gut with collagen and glutamine. Those are two really helpful things. Old school supplement. Old school glutamine, yep. So those are two great ones. And then absolutely magnesium, I do, honestly, you have my social media up right now.

And every time I do a magnesium post, it's like viral. It's insane. Like magnesium tests better than anything I ever do, ever. It's crazy how popular magnesium is. But magnesium, I think most people are deficient and I think it's around 75 to 85% of people are deficient in magnesium my understanding is like not in our soil and stuff like that so it's harder to get no matter how you eat yes exactly and

then we're actually overloaded in and supplements and diet quite often with calcium which uh kind of competes with magnesium at a valence level but they're both plus two and uh we're getting more calcification of our arteries we're not getting enough d3 and sunlight uh as well is K2 to like help metabolize that calcium. So calcium is is kind of competing with magnesium. But magnesium does help obviously not only with muscle contractions and all the things that you can think of with magnesium actually helps with blood sugar management, but certainly bowel movements. And having healthy bowel movements is is very important. And in particular, if you are someone that is using going back to like red or trutide or azimic and terseptide

and all these GLP-1s, or RETA is now called like a GLP-3 kind of, they all going to the incretin mechanism of action that I was talking about, slow down your GI transit, what's called the peristolsus through the gastrointestinal tract. So if you're someone that's fairly sedentary already, and it takes your body moving to have peristulses. So like literally, you know, flexing the abdominal. nominal wall like by movement by working out you know things like that going on a walk going on a walk

is going to help get your your bowels moving as well and if you tend to be sedentary that's not good if you don't have enough magnesium that's not good you're not hydrating enough that's not good now you're on ozimic because you've gained weight and that's slowing everything down you're heading towards like truly clinical constipation and it can be quite bad especially if your doses ramp up to a significant level so this is where fiber magnesium some of these things can help and then lastly like symbiotics is a category that we're talking about quite a bit with prebiotics like prebiotic fibers although you have to be careful of those if your if your gut is disbiotic already the prebiotic fibers can feed a

disbiotic gut so disbiotic meaning like you're kind of having bad bacteria overgrowth in the gut and so getting your gut regulated first before kind of pushing prebiotics is is potentially important and if you're someone that has like inulin fOS you know some of these kinds of things these short chain fibers and you get gas, then that can be because of you having a disbiotic gut. So it's a good way to know. There are some probiotics that I do like. You're hearing a lot about acrimancia with relation to GLP1.

There's a number, like Bacillus subtilis, like has some really good immune data and kind of repair and healing data with clinical outcomes. but that said i think some of them might make sense short term but i like the body's ability to be intelligent for itself because a lot of these probiotics you can run into situations where in the supplement form uh they could already be dead because they're not that stable unless they're like spore form uh you can run into what's called monoculturing where you have too much of one and then it's essentially overrunning your whole gut like to this one probiotic instead of having like a healthy mix and then uh with probiotics you're not letting the body be intelligent if we hug if you

uh you know pet an animal if you travel if you grab doornobs and you know grab food off the floor whatever there's like bacteria everywhere and your body's intelligent needs to be exposed to it to kind of upgrade its immune function and it's not getting that intelligence if you're just loading in probiotics. So to me, what I like doing is getting prebiotics and postbiotics and letting the body do what it needs to do and be intelligent. So postbiotic would be some of these short chain fatty acids, things like I made a version of buterate the C4, which is really important to gut health called tributerine.

That's triglyceride. C4, not the supplement C4, not the pre-workout. C4 as in like C8, C-10, coconut oil-ish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so like half as long carbon-wise, like the chain-wise, little zigzaw-tooth thing as C-8 would be. So like the MCT, like you said. So that's a medium chain triclyceride, like C6 through C12 is medium chain triclycerides. Anything below C6 is considered a short chain fatty acid.

So butyrate. And then if you have three of them together, it's a triglyceride. So this is tributerine. And it has better uptake than a standard butyrate. But that is probably the most powerful thing you can take for your gut and your immunity is probably the postbiotic. I never knew that. So that's really great information because I know about the prebiotics. I don't know certainly about the probiotics.

The prebiotic fibers, my understanding is you can get some of that by heating and cooling certain foods. I guess starches, right? Resistant starch, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it's digestive resistant and yes. And so having or like having bananas like more unripened, like green bananas, it's more resistant starch and less sugar so it has less of a glycemic effect. Exactly. So we know a lot of people have issues with the gut. A lot of people also have major issues, major issues with sleep. You know, sleep, I think if you're looking at sleep the

right way, you're looking at the whole day and you're looking at your intake of everything, like your light environment, your food environment, how you basically send yourself off to bed every night. Those are probably all critical things. Are there some peptides that you like that you think are helpful. I know in the past sometimes people take like a sleep agent and maybe it was too much sometimes. So there is like DSIP, which is, I think it stands for like deep sleep initiating peptide or something. I can't say for certain, but it's something like that. But DSIP, which helps with sleep, there is a new class of sleep drugs that just came out that I'm kind of interested in because I've fought insomnia almost my whole life and it's been miserable a battle

that's really been difficult that I think is just truly biochemical in nature for me yeah I'm like a four to six hour sleeper at most I the longest I ever sleep is for like about 90 minutes yeah yeah I understand so there is this new class that is interesting that I'm researching the It's just getting released to the market. And probably the best one of the bunch is it's, I can't remember the full chemical name. I've just started looking at this and I'm just about to take it when I get back home from this podcast.

It's the short name for it is Dora, D-O-R-A. You can look that up. But it actually. Ryan can look it up. It actually has like anti-Alzheimer's data. Wow. Whereas most of these other sleep agents are anticholinergics. So what happens is they're depleting your body of coline.

When we're talking about benzos, when we're talking about things like unisome and Benadryl slash Tylenol PM, like all of these things that I've used for years. I used to use Ambien and Lunesta. They're all depleting your brain of the phosphatidyl coaling, the kind of the fatty lipids that make up your brain, as well as acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter associated with focus and memory. And so this is why when you take these sleep drugs quite often, you start, you make it sleep, but you're losing memory, losing focus. And over time, they've shown that it has dramatic increase, like 50 to 70 percent increases

in risk for Alzheimer's. So it's something I'm actually very concerned about. And then benzos have their own addiction potential and withdrawal potential that it's intense on their own. I know it literally, I was on Ambien and Lunesta for like a decade. And getting off that, I would have, I was just falling asleep throughout the day, all day, every day for three months. And I couldn't work for about three months, just getting off them. It was pretty brutal. Does it make your recovery from workouts really difficult?

Oh, 1,000%. It seems like you must get really sore and maybe feel like shit from your workouts sometimes. And I remember coming into some of the workouts just still being in a days because sometimes I still couldn't sleep with them and I'd end up taking double triple doses. And it was like still in my system

and I was like groggy and like drunk. And you got to take like a pre-workout to get you up for the workout. Exactly. And then there's blood pressure issues. It's horrible. It's a horrible trap to be in. So I am very interested in this new class where it works on a completely different mechanism. Wow, that's exciting. And I can't make any promises because a lot of times pharmaceutical, you know, it's like they don't have our

best interest in mind. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are just trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have, high cholesterol or these various things. It's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing. They can look at your cholesterol. They can look at the various markers that you have and they can kind of see where you're at and they can help guide you through that.

And there's a few aspects too where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coordinators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. and they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital,

they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator.

They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try the, these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation. Sometimes it's TRT. And sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys. If you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, that's AmeriHealth.com and use code power project for 10% off any panel of your choice. So I'm doing some research on it. I'm going to try it. It does seem promising. I'll say that right

now. But the DSIP, I think some of the GH secretagogues that are in the peptide class are really interesting, like CGAC and Ippamorlin, Tessimoralin, like that are like secretagog, meaning like they help you naturally secrete your own GH versus something that's like exogenous GH that is going to just push a bolus amount of growth hormone in your body and therefore prevent your body from making its own GH similar to like when you do TRT you know you're going to stop making testosterone because there's exogenous testosterone in the body so this is where having like CJC Tessimoralin like these kinds of things are actually very powerful because it's helping your own pituitary make its own GH in that pulsatile fashion like six or

eight pulses a day which also sets your circadian rhythm all of these things should be in line with your circadian rhythm they're in line with your sleep wake cycle and all your hormones and neurotransmitters are performing a concert along with light and lack of light and your sleep wake cycle. So to just get like a massive bolus of GH can actually throw off circadian rhythm. So sticking with the the pulsatile fashion is actually ideal. Testin are on, my understanding too, it can help with visceral fat. Yes, exactly, which is nice because, you know, we tend to think of GH gut and, you know, bodybuilders that get like the kind of keg eight pack. And visceral fat is fairly attached to disease. Cario. Yeah, cardiovascular.

health and yeah a lot of concern there that it's probably the the highest correlate with cardiovascular disease and men is that visceral fat the fat around the organs do we have any peptides for focus you mentioned focus a little earlier yes I to me I've done a lot of work and you may hear about cerebrilicin Samak and Selank those are great but I would say that diehexa is by far and away, the most complete, the most effective. I'm sorry, what's it called? Dihexa. Dihexa.

So that one is one that I would definitely give a try if you want the neutropic effect. Is that like Adderall or is it like more calm, more calm than that? So like probably like my best stack is, I have an ingredient we can talk about on the supplement show, but it's called parazanthine, a metabolite of caffeine. It's getting used in place of caffeine, a lot of places. I've heard of it for you. You don't have the side effects associated with caffeine. You don't have the bio-individuality associated with caffeine.

But it is neutropic. It increases neuroplasticity with BDNF. It increases acetylcholine, serotonin, dopamine, decreases beta amyloid plaque, increases nerve growth factor, increases nitric oxide to the brain. increases glutathione and catalase decreases oxidative stress it's literally anti-aging to the brain and helping you focus so that i love something like new pept which is kind of like gray now it used to be on the market if you know like about raced hams uh like that whole class like you know piracetum and all these different things that were on the market for years but new pep is like really potent and

pretty small doses and you can get it um in like a liquid uh dropper i like that one so uh that i like alpha gpc uh any good neutropics stack any good neutropic stack uh like genius pure is one i've been associated with and we shown double your focus in one use uh i like it more than cdp coline so like any good neutropic stack has a foundation of coline going back to all these sleep drugs that are robbing you of coline therefore robbing you of your ability to focus, have memory, have a healthy brain in terms of its lipids. And then the diehexa, I think, is great. And then from there, you can play with acetyl.

I like the acetylated versions. The acetyl versions tend to cross the blood brain barrier more and have better bioavailability. So the Selank and Samak. And you can actually get those, I think it may. Yeah, I think diehexia. Dihexia may work orally. I've seen some, there's some companies that are playing around with fragments

where they can withstand like the gut and still do what they need to do, but they're actually shorter chain peptides than the actual parent molecule. So I have some friends that are working on this area. So there may be, I've seen diehexa in some supplements and I think it can work on some level. It just takes a bigger dose.

But you can do the subcule. Cutaneous injection or all of those neutropic ones work with an intranasal spray. They're pretty low dose and they work. So dihexa first and foremost, parazanthene I love, Alpha GPC in particular, Genius Pure, Neupept, acetyl, sorry, acetyl selank and acetyl samac. I think that would be the ultimate neutropic stack right there. and then there's even some other research compounds you can go into that are really interesting like compound p and j147 bromantane a lot of these are like dopaminergic kind of thing so

it just depends if you're someone that needs like that kind of kick in the butt of dopamine and those can help but parazanthine does a lot of that as well are some of those things you just mentioned are they more like encouragers of dopamine or are they more like a shot of dopamine? Yeah, that's a good question. There's like Kratum or something like that feels like a shot of dopamine. Yeah, well that works on like the opiate receptors, which is like now you're kind of getting into like the addictive nature of, you know, like oxycodone and vicaran and opium heroin, which makes those things hard to get off. would not mess with cratum or maybe some people say cratom or you know whatever yeah yeah i really wouldn't mess with that but no these are these are more long term actually if you want to know that like

dopamine on a broader level can be like really healthy uh can help give you that get up and go energy get stuff done energy right so having like a cold plunge has been shown to uh increase dopamine for about three hours pretty dramatically. Whereas something like cocaine or maybe, you know, like a high dose of caffeine or, you know, some of these kinds of things, like it can be just a quick shot and then the drop. And the drop can feel pretty rough. Like you're pulled the rug out. Exactly.

Exactly. You feel like you have this burst of getting things done. And then it's really that what we call in science the delta, like meaning the difference that can feel dramatic. You know, it's kind of like when guys get off a cycle. and they get depressed and, you know, crying and like everything's falling apart and, you know, it's the delta, right? It's not necessarily that you're back to whatever this baseline level. It's that you fell so hard so fast, right? So when you're talking about dopamine, it's ideal to have like this longer kind of curve where something like a cold plunge or high intensity interval training,

you know those kinds of things can like have it stay up for hours but in these some of these compounds it can stay up for several hours as well parasanthine it stays up for several hours what about some of these uh other things that are coming our way they've been around for a little while but it seems like people are working on perfecting them a little bit more things to help us with uh gaining more muscle mass um these kind of like i guess myostatin inhibitors the phallostatin yeah but we getting in like some weird territory like are we going to blow up our heart with stuff like that perhaps this one is probably the most compelling the most interesting the most promise and this is the one that could actually ruin the whole peptide

industry right is full of statin i really i really mean this right now and and i don't know how i feel about it it definitely can increase your risk for tumor growth i think fairly dramatically and it can increase the risk of hypertrophy of your organs, not just your muscles. So that does include your heart and your liver and your spleen and your stomach, etc. All the organs. And then, you know, potentially like you can have the visceral adiposity as well. There is some concerns around it, but the muscle growth would be amazing, especially like if you go higher doses or you, you go like with a greater frequency and I definitely think this one is going to have massive abuse potential because myostatin inhibitors it takes the brakes off like you're literally just unchecked

growth but you can have unchecked growth of cancer cells too so yeah like I will just put tons of caution around this if you were to do this please be safe what I would do is I would maximize protein synthesis in very short burst using folostatin maybe some other compounds like one I've worked on a dilucine we'll talk about on a different podcast HMB some of these kinds of things but then I would take time off and do something like rapamycin where you're inhibiting protein synthesis I know that sounds crazy but that's like very powerful in terms of anti-aging is that we have kind of burst. This goes back to that idea of like pulsatile, right? We're supposed to have big pulses of enabalism and then catabolism and then repair and turnover and cycling. So I wouldn't

just keep this kind of going indefinitely. Like I would definitely think about, you know, six to eight weeks and then a long time, 12 weeks off or something and don't go too crazy with something like that and and think about taking things that are related to autophagy related to inhibiting protein synthesis so that would be a great time to do some fasting and if you're concerned about you know catabolism and muscle loss then take like HMB in pretty high doses with it you know keep your protein at a certain level but but you know take something like rapamycin you can take spermidine in pretty high doses which is going to simulate autophagy and do some fasting like because I do have concerns there's there is some data showing that like at least if you do like

three days a month of fasting like your risk for cancer goes down to almost nothing wow so and I had three days in a row so this is like 72 hours of just like a water fast so that would be pretty powerful if you could do that yeah especially and and maybe if you do a ketogenic diet that's been shown to really reduce risk of cancer umcTs exogenous ketones uh but i do have some concern with volostatin yeah i've been between training eating your protein slamming down some creatine here and there along with maybe for some folks maybe some trt you should be able to hold on to a considerable amount of muscle like it shouldn't i mean i don't know how much more muscle someone would want to hold. You know, somebody walking around with an extra 20, 30 pounds of muscle.

Like, you don't need to be much more jack than that. Like that's quite a bit. Exactly. Exactly. At some point you become muscularly obese. I remember I went to a dinner years back with Jay Cutler and we were, you know, going up to the second floor. I was here in California actually going up to the second floor and going to a sushi place. And he was walking up the stairs. and he was just like kind of out of breath and he's like, man, you have no idea how hard it is to carry all this extra weight. Yeah.

I mean, at some point it kind of sucks. Yeah, to lug that amount of muscle mass around. He was absolutely enormous. Yeah. He was huge. What about in terms of, we went over like focus and sleep and we run around a bunch. In terms of weight loss, we haven't really talked a lot about,

we mentioned Red of True Tide briefly, but what is your experience with, things you've heard about red to true time so redda is they're calling it a glp three because it's working on glp1 gip and glucagon it's really three pathways it's going to protect muscle far more than like a traditional glp1 a first generation like semi glutide ozypic um it is far lower side effects there's a lot less of the kind of um constipation diarrhea uh there's there's a fair ability to eat uh well when you're on reda like i'm on it right now and i don't feel nearly the the kind of killing my appetite uh like i did on i tried ozimic for for

for a couple weeks and it was just side effect city. It was horrible. I had zero ability to move biomass through my gastrointestinal tract. It was terrible. I literally was surviving on full bottles of magnesium citrate to just kind of move that through. And then at night it felt like it was all coming up

instead of going down. I was getting severe heartburn. I had to like sit up in bed. I felt so full all the time that I couldn't eat anything anymore except for like small amounts of fruit and liquid diet. And I pretty much lost my desire to eat and enjoy food at all. And so that was miserable. And I was losing muscle like crazy in just a few weeks.

And with Reda, it's literally been just the opposite. I feel a reduction in inflammation. I feel better energy. I feel like I'm sleeping easier. Like fat is falling off me. Muscle is staying on. I have always had difficulty with carbs just seemed to put weight on me. And so I was keto for 20 years.

And lately I've been like bringing carbs back in and it's like it's been doing great with the RETA. Like, I feel like it's truly restored all of my insulin sensitivity. Wow. And if anything, I actually feel better like having some carbs, having more calories now. Like, I actually feel like I'm eating more now than less. And like weight is still falling off and I'm still maintaining my mass. Maybe reset your metabolic rate. Totally. That's totally what I think's happening. Like, I feel like I'm, you know, 18 or something. Which could be the case. I mean, I mean, first of all, you bring in carbohydrates. There's a potential that you are increasing your body temperature a little bit.

And I know there's some people that talk about body temperature. They say for every degree down below 76.7, I think it's like 14% metabolic rate could be dropping. So there's people that their body temperature is off by, you know, maybe just a little tick here and there. and then their metabolic rate is down 20%. I was almost always, every time I got my temperature checked, like 97.9 or something like that. Like, yeah, about 7 tenths of a degree, yeah, low. Yeah, and I think that, you know,

that could have a huge impact on just how much food you're able to consume. Are you stacking that with anything else? There is one other that's on another pathway that's really interesting that a lot of the first generation peptides like Ozympic are getting stacked with called Cagney Cagna, Cagna Trutide, maybe it's like Cagnetide. It's called Cagney for short, C-A-G-N-I. But that one is working on a different pathway, amylin, I believe, and it affects appetite as well on a completely different level.

So there is now literally four, like a quadruple pathway peptide that's being worked on by Eli Lilly. Yeah, Cagnia Trutide. Yeah, there you go. So that one is affecting appetite and could be stacked with RETA if you want. And it looks like Lily is forthcoming

in the next year or so going to release a quadruple pathway that's similar to what I'm saying like RETA plus Kagna and so that's interesting but like they're also kind of regenerating some of the GLP ones by adding this compound as well so that's potentially something that you could add and then as like an AMP activator which would be anti-aging as well as metabolically enhancing SLUPP 3-2 some some say 3-3-2 can be really interesting as well. You can take this one orally.

I know Bio-Longevity Labs has it. The ones that are being sold on the internet that are not biolongevity labs are at a half a milligram per capsule. Biolongevity Labs is doing 100 milligrams per capsule, so it's literally 200x the level. Oh, wow. The 0.5 milligrams does nothing.

And the 100 is kind of where it's at. Like I would say 100 to 200 milligrams a day is like where you're going to like really move the needle. You have to be careful with like the AMPK activators though, like around your workout. That's going to potentially conflict with your workout. It's similar to like having berberine, dihydroberine metformin, these kinds of things. Like you want those at times like maybe four hours away from your workout. and they're great in particular with high carb as well. So those would be some of the ones that I would look at is the SLUPP-3-2,

the RETA, maybe the Kagna. And there's another peptide called AOD that's interesting as well for fat loss too. Yeah, that one's supposed to burn some belly fat or something like that. Yeah, visceral. Yeah. So another visceral fat one. Oh, and then also the GH peptides to some degree as well. like are going to help with some of that fatty acids and stuff like that and then we have

also MOTC which seems to be awesome awesome for insulin sensitivity that's a huge problem with people if I was to rank all my peptides right now number one is RETA number two is MOTC I've talked about mitochondrial function for years and I've said that mito is the next keto like mito is everything like it's you know your powerhouse of the cell right so a little factory makes your ATP your dentissin triphosphate the energy currency for the body but mitochondrial function is going to determine how much energy you have cellularly systemically to live life and live vitally and to live free from disease. And the number of mitochondria that you have is going to determine that too. So it's called mitochondrial biogenesis when we increase our number of mitochondria.

And then mitochondrial dysfunction happens when we're eating processed foods and not getting enough sleep when we're under too much stress, having alcohol, getting exposed to junk light, all these type of things so having MOTC and RETA at the same time is going to like make you feel like you're a kid again and then if you add these healing peptides the the glow stack that you're mentioning like BPC TB 500 KPV GHKCU if you stack all those that would be in my top five and then you know maybe in uh an exercise memetic like SS31 and then the GH secretagogues like the CJC or Ippamoralin and some Tessimoralin what are some places you go to for information on this because it's hard to like

learn about it like you you're just spitting out like a wealth of knowledge and I know that you have like a lot of people behind the scenes since you've created so many patented and supplements and stuff over the years but like what are some good resources do you think people can check out as well you know it's hard because a lot of this is fairly anecdotal that we're getting data on like some of the data is that does exist is preclinical data meaning rodent level data some of its in vitro data meaning cellular data there's very little human data on a lot of these peptides and because it's not going to be funded if they can't patent it so a lot of the data that I'm getting is, you know, more at the anecdotal level. This is where I would love to see some

of these companies step in, the peptide sciences of the world. It's hard because they're saying research use only, RUO on a lot of these things. But I'm actually like associated with a decentralized research company called reputable, reputable.health, where you can fund studies by just sending like wearables and the supplements or the drinks or whatever to 200, 300, 400 people and get a study done outside of like a clinic or, you know, academic or or CRO kind of environment that's, you know, quote unquote, more controlled. But you can get like a lot more higher powered study in terms of the number of participants and it being decentralized. And with the controls are improving with people doing um you know like using like um what is it my

what's my the the food tracking app is it oh like my fitness pal or something yeah my fitness pal things like that and they're tracking like their supplement use they're tracking their sleep with the you know wearables and all the things so they're having to send pictures of their food their supplements all the you know all of this stuff when they're in the group and so it's getting pretty controlled. And so that data is actually very valuable. And I'd love to see some of these peptide companies that are making millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to put some money into research so that we could have better data. You know, in particular how some of these compounds might interact with each other would be absolutely fascinating or how they get dose or

frequency or some of these kinds of things so that we could really nail it down. But as you know, like in the bodybuilding community, you know, you have the Anabolic Encyclopedia with my friend Bill O'Ewellyn, like, there's a lot of data for the last 50 years on just, you know, bodybuilders speaking to each other, right? And it gets pretty scientific in terms of like the, you know, how you pyramid things and taper off and taper on and, you know, I'm starting this. I'm, you know, tapering off that. and the post-cycle therapy, all the things, right? It's getting pretty nuanced like that in the peptide community.

I think, you know, if you want anecdotal feedback, you know, Reddit, you may think that's kind of the Wild West, but there's some pretty savvy users that are, you know, putting out a lot of data on themselves, you know, kind of the Brian Johnsons of the world that are giving a lot of data that are putting things up there on places like Reddit. Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you? At Sean Wells, S-H-A-W-L-L-S-O-S-E-L-L-S on Instagram, Sean Wells.com, S-H-A-W-N. I have free newsletter on the site. I have a lot of free content with great infographics. I have a book called The Energy Formula. It's a bestseller that's on Amazon,

and it's an e-book, hardcover, soft cover, and audible and then I have a chorus on my site as well on the energy formula and then if you go to mind valley I have a whole chorus just on supplements the ultimate guide to supplements on there and so yeah I would appreciate the follow you can DM me with any questions and I'd love to connect man you've been busy yeah I like the watch like the style the jacket and everything thank you thank you strength is never weakness weakness week this never strength catch you guys later bye